


we were meant for this

by starvels (dinosaur)



Series: we were meant [2]
Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cliche, Community: cap_ironman, Dating, Domestic Fluff, Endearments, Established Relationship, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Love at First Sight, M/M, Moving In Together, Other, Stony Bingo, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Trans Characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-04-06 07:37:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14052105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dinosaur/pseuds/starvels
Summary: Their love is a fairytale cliché. And Tony will fight anyone who says differently.





	we were meant for this

**Author's Note:**

> i thought of some more clichés :""")  
> a sequel that i cannot guarantee will make sense without you having read the first fic in this series! 
> 
> title once again from [take my heart](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8s0l1INhKY) by donora
> 
> also, for my bingo square of 'warm and fuzzy feelings'

 

 

“Salt?”

“Garlic salt.”

“Mm.”

“The table – “

“Yeah, fixed it earlier, during that – “

“Oh yeah, how’d it –“

“Good, eh. You know.”

“Same with my, you know.”

“That I do, babydoo.”

“Stop.”

“Nah.”

A kiss, wrapped around a smile, pressed to his temple.

Sometimes, Tony thinks it’s too easy.

Things aren’t this easy in real life.

“What if we were in a simulated reality not necessarily wetware akin to the Matrix but not necessarily that protocol deviant from the Matrix?”

“My code would still be doing most of the carrot cutting? Pass the –“

“Oh yeah, here.”

 

\---

 

Tony’s not an idiot. He knows what magnetism looks like.

Their first meeting is at  _a wedding_. And Jess and Carol could make even the most salty sand dunes amenable to the warmth of a wet body. Steve’s entire Steve-ness is casually devastating, breathtaking, accented with eyeshadow in baby blue.

 _So_ , Tony says hi.

He looks back when Steve looks at him.

He’s not surprised that they don’t have sex that night, that they spend the winding dusk of Carol’s wedding sharing a plate and bumping elbows, quietly feeling out the lines of each other, the distance between their catching eyes. He’s not surprised that the next day, the after celebration and court house visit and after-after celebration, they meet again – and this time don’t look away.

He’s not surprised by the way Steve places kisses along Tony’s shoulders, or even the way their legs feel together, softly intertwined like bedsheets. He’s not surprised by the bright flush of orgasm that cascades across his chest, tingles his fingertips against Steve’s heaving, just-as-beautiful-not-in-formal-wear stomach. The expectation is almost as good as the reality and that makes him laugh, bright and Steve laughs back and that jostles their bodies together in interesting ways and they go again -

Tony is surprised, though, blown away – by not just how good he and Steve look together, but by how well they  _are_  together.

He didn’t expect Steve to roll over in Tony’s hotel bed the morning after that next spectacular singular night, lean up on an elbow and say, “Heya. You feel like bagels?”

Tony didn’t expect to want to kiss Steve’s cheek instead of his ass. When he settles for booping his sleep-red nose, that’s a surprise too.

“You’re so funny in the mornings,” Steve giggles a bit.

Talking in a present. Talking as if he knows how Tony is in the mornings, plural.

Something thrums in Tony’s spine.

“You’ve got your shirt on inside out, sleepyhead,” Tony says instead. It comes out  _fond_.

The coffee shop they go to asks them for one name, as if they are one unit.

Steve pays for both of their drinks and bagels with that universal shrug,  _you’ll get it next time._

 _A next time!_  goes Tony’s heart.

Then Steve hooks a foot under a chair to bring it close to another and Tony sits with his elbow touching Steve’s and they talk and talk and  _talk_ some more.

When Tony stops to take stock of himself and his urgently twittering phone when Steve goes to the bathroom 5 hours later, is when it finally hits him.

He has a moment of clarity, sharp as finding the missing electron arrangement in a new processor line.

He sits up straight.

He looks down at the croissant he and Steve are sharing, the three Splenda packets Steve has preemptively placed for Tony’s next coffee, the unconscious sprawl of Tony’s body to hold Steve’s empty chair close: a symbol, This Is Taken.

Everything rushes.

 _This is what people write stories about._ Tony thinks.  _This is what they mean._

And oh god, does Tony mean it.

The thing shaking his spine is commitment.

This thing in his heart is fairytales made real life.

When Steve comes back, Tony hugs him like he doesn’t have to worry about letting go. Steve hugs back as if he’s always been holding on. Tony is surprised, and then again – he isn’t.

 

\---

 

The first week, they see each other every day. Tuesday, dinner at Steve’s favorite pizza place. Wednesday, lunch at a new bibimbap place. Thursday, the park, a walk, a pair of earphones shared between the two of them. So on, so strong.

Tony flies in from California almost every day and for the first time since he was 12 – the extravagance is exciting. Airport greetings become a part of their  _Thing_. Steve doesn’t have to pick him up, but he does and he always hugs Tony before he kisses him and he takes Tony’s hand and his handbag and asks “How you doing, tiny star?” so completely wholeheartedly, it’s like Steve opened his life and his chest to Tony in one painless, harnessed swoop.

It still makes Tony’s stomach free fall.

“Good now,” he says. “Missed you,” he says. “How are you, honey?”

Tony’s teeth grind on their goodbyes. Longing is a bittersweet tang under his tongue.

Hands cupping Tony’s jaw, lips familiar, on the return, Steve smooths the taste away.

Magic.

 

\---

 

He never actually tells Steve how much of a tightrope he walked, dropping the company, giving the job to Pepper, moving to New York after dating Steve for 13 days. There was an official inquiry to his health, spearheaded by Pepper herself.

The first long while, Tony’s pretty sure Steve just thought Pepper generally disapproved of them moving so fast, rather than of Steve  _himself_. Tony’s not planning on ever telling him that no, it was Steve specifically and yeah, she did kinda think he was an evil machinating trollop intent on ruining Tony’s professional success.

That’d be a bit much.

Instead, he hums, puts his hands to Steve’s fire-worked muscles and says, nonchalantly, “I’m thinking about staying here.”

“In this  _hotel_   _room_?”

“This is a singular hotel suite,” Tony says, patiently, for the fourth time.

“Swear this  _bed_  is bigger than the entire floor of the projects Ma and me were in.” Steve pauses, exhales out with a hard push of Tony’s thumbs, “Warmer, too.”

“Well,” that’s something Tony’s already looking into – a boroughs public housing initiative for him to quietly push where his name won’t be on it. “I was thinking of something smaller than this, actually. Not a Stark holding.”

Steve shifts, gold lashes blinking at Tony from their place fanned on the pillow. Under Tony’s hands, muscles cascade, but don’t tense. Tony kisses his favorite spot on the top of Steve’s spine, the place that’s always a little smoother than the rest, from the collar of Steve’s fire jacket.

“Where?” Steve asks.

And this is how Tony tells Steve about the respectably New York sized apartment with a kitchen window and hardwood floors and the bedroom that desperately needs new curtains and the walls that could hold shelves and collections they have yet to keep, just a few stops away from Steve’s firehouse that Tony bought legally with his own personal savings and a whole lot of daydreaming eyes.

And this is how Tony asks Steve to move in with him after dating him for less than a month.

This is how Steve pauses, lip catching between his teeth before he lets it go and says, “Is it weird if I say, I thought you’d never ask?”

And Tony closes his eyes and lays down on him and thinks,  _Oh thank god you feel it, too. Thank god for you._

“Let’s be weird together.”

Steve laughs quietly and rolls them together until Tony can’t find the end of himself.

 

\--

 

Living together changes some things.

“It’s weird to not have a car,” Tony admits to Steve as he’s working on the fenders for the new Prometheus line.

Steve Rogers, of the Staunch Public Transit Defense with Drunken 2AM Soliloquies Club raises his eyebrows from over his arson investigation paperwork.

“The company I literally own builds cars for a living,” Tony says.

Steve’s left eyebrow goes a bit further up.

“I design them.”

Steve’s finger taps the table.

“I’m an engineer.”

Steve’s mouth twitches.

“I make things go zoom-zoom.”

In the mudroom, the dryer is beeping musically that it’s finished its cycle. Steve tilts his head like acknowledging both Tony and it.

“Anyways, can you remind me to renew my transit pass, god.”

“Sure, babe,” Steve says, and goes back to his paperwork.

Tony tries to hide his smile and doesn’t really succeed.

(Not a minute later, there’s a hand under his chin and a smile pressed to his own and Tony loves being close to Steve, loves knowing his personal space is Steve’s and Steve’s is his and they are theirs and he loves the apricot lip gloss Steve wears on days when he wants to feel pretty and when Tony kisses the taste of it off Steve’s lips, he hopes, hopes that Steve knows he would give every car he’s ever had a single finger in designing, just for the simple pleasure of being with Steve in this city in their apartment of two months.

Steve whispers, “I love you so much.”

Tony’s pretty sure he knows.)

Living together doesn’t change  _most_  things.

 

\---

 

They celebrate putting away the last of the boxes from the move with a bottle of grapefruit juice, sprawled on the floor of their new dining room.

The walls are bare and the furniture is under their new drapes because they’re still arguing color schemes. Tony’s pretty sure it’s mostly just for the fun of going to the paint store. In a few days, they’ll both mutually act like they didn’t want #MQ3-53 Sky Light View from the get go and they’ll grin and cover each other with paint. Somehow, things like this have become a knowledge instead of a hope.

Legs draped over Steve’s, Tony holds his rocket shaped glass from their DC trip aloft. Steve’s glass has eagle wings. He balances it on Tony’s knee with one arm and the chill makes Tony shiver occasionally, makes Steve lean closer.

“We ought to celebrate,” Tony says absently, counting the petals of the daisy on Steve’s short’s pocket Tony can see peeking out from under his sweater.

“More ‘an this?” Steve sounds like warm molasses.

“Like, for our 3 months.”

“3 months,” Steve repeats, not like a question.

“Yeah,” Tony smiles a bit.

“Mm,” Steve hums, smiling back.

It feels like forever and nothing, at once, Tony agrees.

“Is it exactly 3?” Steve taps the glass on Tony’s knee.

“Well.” Tony shrugs.

“Wait,” Steve straightens up a bit, muscles shifting like well-oiled metal plates, propping him up. “What day do you consider our anniversary?”

“ _Well_ ,” Tony dips a finger into his glass and draws a star on the inside of Steve’s elbow. Steve twitches a little, ticklish, but doesn’t pull away. “My body was yours from the moment you eye-fucked my shoulders –”

“Again, I ask, why must you imply vore was –”

“But we didn’t technically fuck till 27 hours later –”

“ _Again_ , I ask, why do you know the exact time –”

“I can’t have glanced at the clock?”

“Not when I had my tongue inside of you, no.”

“Fine,” Tony demurs, “I looked 20 minutes later when I gathered my brain from the far flung galaxy you licked it to. So, 27 hours and 20 minutes after we fell in love at first sight.”

“Ah,” Steve sighs, pressing a wet kiss to the corner of Tony’s mouth, “such romance.”

“We’re made of it, sugar-pop.”

Tony kisses Steve back, deep and grapefruit sweet, just for a moment.

Eyes soft, Steve lets him go and noses into Tony’s temple. “You didn’t answer.”

Tony shrugs. “I could have met you any day and that day would be our anniversary to me.”

A small silence. Calloused and gentle, Steve’s thumb smooths back and forth across Tony’s collar. They sit like that, while Tony takes a sip of juice and hums a happy note.

“Love you,” Steve says simply. Tony ducks a smile sideways into Steve’s arm. “I,” Steve continues, “Would consider the day we met, as well, but.”

“But?”

A pointed raised eyebrow. “But.”

Tony considers.

Carol and Jess got married on  _their_  anniversary.

Tony catches Steve’s eyes.

“They honestly would kill us.”

“No court’d convict,” Steve nods somberly.

They fall into each other and laugh and laugh.

 

\---

 

The flowers have been there since the beginning. Or rather, have been  _theirs_  since the beginning.

At first, it’s incidental.

Sure, Tony gives Steve a red rose he pulls off a wedding table, and sure Steve presses it for his journal, and sure, Tony later considers it as telling as a Monet watercolor. But later, they come back to it. Steve is drawing particular sunflowers on a napkin on their 3rd date and Tony loves them, pockets the napkin and sets it delicately behind glass in his office. Pepper gives it a narrowed eye but lets it go. Tony smiles beatifically. He is working intellicrops that week and it stays on his mind. Steve stays on his mind.

He sends the small bouquet of whorled sunflowers from the project directly, the same day he wears his sunstone earrings and spends the day humming.

The airplane is taxi-ing when Steve texts Tony a simple,  _“They’re beautiful, Tone. Beautiful”_

After that, he doesn’t have to look for flowers to send. He just has to watch Steve, and wait. Then, let that guide him to them, send them, watch Steve again, as he places them carefully in their own dedicated room, like a floral treasury that everyone in their life knows of but doesn’t know the true value.

It suits Tony quite, quite fine.

 

\---

 

There’s routines.

Date nights and chore separation and habits like layers of life woven atop one another.

A bank account with both of their names, just four weeks younger than their relationship. The shape of their kitchen Tony knows by the space Steve occupies in it. Steve lays out Tony’s clothes and jewelry when he dresses, times himself to finish as Tony’s accessorizing, helps. Tony adores their pottery class, fails in their watercolor class and doesn’t care, admires Steve in the gym more than he works out in the gym, and waits to go shopping for clothes until Steve is around to drag along as well.

“But what if I  _did_  need a fourth red silk shirt?” Tony asks, hands rubbing along the seams.

 “I’d tell you it’d be on me, only if you’re in it, on me?”

“My,” Tony curls his voice high, “Are you propositioning me, Mr. Rogers?”

“I know,” Steve goes along with the tone, sliding one hand down Tony’s side to pull him closer like marionette. “you’re but a simple bird,” pleasure is molten gold in Tony’s stomach, “but darling, I’d like to give you a life of love and opulence.”

Tony licks his lips. Both of them know how he likes to be called that,  _bird_ , likes to be spoiled like he deserves it.

“I’d like to have it.”  _With you._

They’re swaying together.

“I’d like to have you,” Steve says, honestly.

Steve’s a texture-guy. Likes to close and personal with his artist hands.

And Tony would absolutely, beyond a doubt let him, right here, right now. He’s pretty sure they’ve already been warned for getting a little too handsy in this shop when Steve tried on that lovely lace number but that’s negligible. But, beyond that, Tony likes to do things thoroughly; read, Steve. And they’re also on the clock.

Tony hums, rubs his thumb along the line of Steve’s watch. “Après, Monsieur Rogers?” he asks, glancing from under his lashes.

“Oui, bien sur.” Steve curls a grin, inches his hands up under Tony’s shirt, “Ou,” he squeezes, “during.”

There are still times, despite the beautiful normality of his relationship with Steve, that Tony still has to be a Stark. Tony knows that Steve is here, trying to keep Tony’s spirits high, because the gala is going to be long and crowded and filled with alcohol. It goes without saying, it’s kinder than anyone else Tony’s ever brought to a gala or event fitting has been. Steve’s attentive, genuinely interested in what fabrics and topics Tony leans to, tends to the curve of Tony’s highlighted cheek with his lips, listens, watches, makes lovely, lovely suggestions.

All that is adored, but it’s almost superfluous, against the pure joy that just being with Steve inspires.

Tony would attend a thousand galas for the joy of holding Steve’s hand during them.

A terrible dancer, Tony’s Steve.

But when the music comes on, he trusts Tony to lead him.

“I’ll get the shirt,” Tony whispers.

Steve’s eyes dance.

 

\---

 

When they get Minnie, it’s autumn so ripe, it’s almost winter, and she tracks red,gold,red leaves into the apartment with a happy fervor that neither of them can deny.

Tony loves her. Loves her curly Q tail. Loves her soft mouth toy carrying. Loves the way she swishes her tail when you’re talking to her like she’s responding to every word. Loves the way she’s got so much love in her old bones, it’s like the years just added to the health of her heart.

He hopes, for that, for them.

“She missed you,” he says to Steve, as they pick him up from the firehouse. Minnie borks happily and slings herself into Steve’s face.

In the garage behind the pile of Steve&Minnie, nearly the whole house is gathered. At the center, Bucky is glaring at a lanky newbie and Luke and Jessica are standing with a bag of popcorn like its primetime. Tony winks at them. Jess sticks her tongue out.

From the ground, Steve says faintly, “I missed her,”

“Course,” Tony swings his tangerine glasses, “She’s the sun.”

A laugh shakes what bit of Steve’s shoulders Tony can see. He grins back. Dani Cage tends to claim that Minnie is a superdog. And Tony has done nothing but categorically, absolutely agree. Her superpower is Blinding Happiness.

Tail windmilling like she can hear his thoughts, Minnie nuzzles into Steve’s legs and then back ups to let him stand back up.

“Missed you too,” Steve says, wrapping a long arm around Tony’s waist. He uses Tony to steady himself the last few degrees. Tony tucks his glasses away safe on his collar, balances his fulcrum of a lover with a finger in his work jean’s belt loop. Steve smiles down at glasses fondly, even though they’re new. If anyone asks, it’s the heat making Tony’s cheeks pink.

“You missed me for 6 hours?”

Silly for Tony to ask. He missed Steve.

Steve just kisses his cheek. Knows. Contentedness.’ close cousin creeps across his face. Smug, ridiculously attractive, firefighter pin-up Tony is in love with.  “I loved my flowers.” Ah yes. Betonies, today, knitted as just blooming, pure purple. Tony remembers them fondly. “How did you know, though?”

How did Tony have enough time to order a hand-knitted bouquet when Steve got called in from their bed to cover a shift on 20 minutes notice?

Tony shrugs, humble, warmed. “Got my ways.”

“You really bribe Capt. Hill to tell you immediately when someone calls out?”

_Yes._

Between their legs, Minnie wriggles herself into her favorite slouch and sits with a hefty tail thump. Patting her head and poking at Steve’s forearm with his other hand, Tony takes his time hurumphing with gumption, “That’s rude, assuming blatant bribery.”

“You’re  _so_  sweet, honey,” Steve presses the corner of their mouths together in a messy, happy kiss.  

Tony leans into it, gives it a sequel, a series, their own stand-alone two season tv show. Steve hums a high approval rating. Every day, Tony kisses Steve. And every day, he thinks this could be his life’s calling, his skills best put to work.

Someone in the peanut gallery hoots, a loud braying sort of interruption.

“ – Overcompensating for trouble in paradise, huh!”

They break apart as Steve goes rigid. The metal of his jaw flexes against Tony’s cheek, turns their happy pocket into a storm cloud.

“Easy, Cap,” Tony says quietly, hands easing up and down his chest.

Steve exhales, long and hard.

It’s something Tony’s not supposed to realize. That this gets Steve’s gander up so bad. That their friends think they’re launching too fast, too far.

Not so much that Steve keeps it from Tony – but that Steve wants so badly to keep their bubble of bold, brave love pristine. Everyone in the world believes they are each other’s mistake.

But, they know the real story.

“Lunch, love?” Tony asks, instead.

They’ll talk about it later, Tony knows. An assurance like marrow in his bones. Topics they don’t avoid: Steve’s parents, joint bank accounts, spiders in the bathroom, Tony’s AA meetings, universal health care, Steve’s T-shots, the scars on Tony’s chest, dresses, family dinners, this thing between them.

Tension drains out of Steve’s body like wind pulling a chime.

“Yeah, please.”

“Gyros?”

“Please.”

 Tony slides on the shades and takes Steve’s hand.

 

\--

 

Loving Steve is the sky opening up to flight.

Loving Steve is realizing something that was always up there waiting for him, but he never knew he would one day touch.

It’s steady and breathtaking and bold and sometimes, it’s exhilaration, elation.

He thinks of this casually, not explosively, often just sitting with the thought as a state of being.

Tony’s reading. Poetry.

Steve’s drawing. Trees.

Tony is in love with Steve and loving Steve makes all the love poetry makes sense.

The charcoal scratching pauses.

“Hm?” Tony asks, without looking up.

“Read me something?”  It sounds a lot like,  _talk to me._

The sketchbook gets set on the coffee table, Steve’s arms slide around Tony, his legs tangle with Tony, sinking them back into the couch.

Tony reads the page he is on while he thinks of what he really wants to say. Finishes  _Commonplace_  with a light, “out of common place lives makes His beautiful whole,” and looks for what to really say. Flips back a few pages, pauses, starts in middle of a poem.

That’s where they are, after all.

“I love you,” he says, “not only for what you have made of yourself; but for what you are making of me. I love you for putting your hand into my heaped up heart and passing over all the foolish weak things you couldn’t help seeing there,” Tony inhales as Steve does. “and drawing out in the light, all the beautiful belongings that no one else had looked, quite far enough,” Tony finishes at a whisper, “to find.”

Steve swallows.

His arms are tight, hot around Tony’s back.

“You’re not foolish, or weak.”

“I see you’re not disputing anything else in that,” Tony slides a finger along the page.

Steve shakes his head a bit, tendons jumping for a moment as he swallows again. “Tony, I – I’ve never. I  _love_  you. I’ve never loved. I.”

Steve’s a crier, which Tony appreciates because, he is too. But sometimes it’s silly, the way they tumble tears into each other like bodies of water meeting across different densities. Then again, Tony’s fond, thinking always,  _the line where we are separated is only visible from far away._

“I know,” Tony gentles a thumb across Steve’s temple, “I know, darling.”

“Do you?”

“Sure, I –“

“Do you know that sometimes I sit and just watch you sleep?”

“Yeah, it’s weird,” Tony rolls his eyes, fond.

Steve moves one big hand up Tony’s back, cups his head, pulling his eyes back down, “Do you know,” he starts, curling them closer, pressing Tony’s face so close to his that Tony has to look between his eyes. It makes him feel owned, makes him feel so wholly held. “Do you know,” Steve says again, “that it feels like I might explode? Like all the love in the universe works through my heart in the span of one of your breaths? Do you know that I can’t  _breathe_  for all the space in my body you take up? Do you know I could draw the exact shape of your nose, 40 years from now?”

Tony’s voice is gravel, “You don’t kno –“

“I do,” Steve closes his eyes for a second like he’s imagining doing it, like he’s thinking of the dark, bathroom light lit sponge of Tony’s sleeping nose and achieving inner peace, “I do.”

For one long moment, they hold each other.

Tony’s eyes feel wet.

“I used to think it was made up,” Steve says, eyes flicking between Tony’s, intent, intense. “That there’s nothing like the world stopping for another person, stealing your breath. We’ve loved before –“ He pauses and holds eye contact.

“We have,” Tony confirms, quiet.

“But this –“

“This.”

Quiet, like. Full, like. A state of being for both of them.

“I do feel like we’ve made each other more each other – I do feel, I’ve  _found_  you,” Steve inhales on a cusp of a cry, “I wasn’t even looking.”

“Darling,” Tony says, doesn’t know what to –

“I know you weren’t either, but.”

“There we were.”

“Here we are.”

 

\---

 

New Years Eve. Friday. Sometime past the sun creeping its fingers over the edge of the skyline and into their bedroom. Tony, facedown in their 6 pillows, smelling the lingering combination of their fancy perfumes, waking in hopscotch jumps. If Tony turns on his side, pulls the comforter down off his ear, gets it tangled on his piercings, sighs and shifts it off, he can listen.

The city, around him.

Their upstairs neighbors shower pipes gurgling.

In the kitchen, Minnie’s clipping nails.

Tony smiles, waits.

A low wuff, Minnie’s lamb-treat whine.

Bubbles of quiet. The contrast pop of the stovetop.

Then, finally, Steve’s voice, a melodic wave of murmurs.

He says something comforting, a soft cadence, then an uplift – a promise. He repeats it, a giggle mixing with Minnie’s happy tapdancing. She borks, just a bit. Steve agrees, a firm line of determination. She borks, a bit louder. Steve’s voice curls low, a hushing reassurance. Maybe, just there, the sound of Tony’s name. Minnie settles.

The sheets are soft under Tony’s smoothing hands.

The language of love, Tony thinks, has many sorts of dialects. But this is one of his favorite. It’s the one from his home.

He stretches out his arms. Eases out of bed to lean on the kitchen door jam. Joins in the conversation.

They greet him like bright colored exclamation points.

A couple of weeks ago they decided that they would just have a quiet day, for this day. They’ve been working a lot, Steve covering shifts for people for Christmas, after taking off before it to go with Tony to the cemetery. Tony’s been doing Maria Stark Foundation work, prepping for the end of the fiscal quarter, worrying over winter brake line safety checks.

Tomorrow, they’ll go out. Celebrate a new beginning.

But today is just for them.

“Brunch?” Tony asks, side pressed to Steve’s.

“Lunch.”

They eat, watching b movies from the Sci-Fi channel, draped over the couch.

From the corner, the Christmas tree twinkles at them in front of a window-scape of undisturbed snow. Their angel lies asleep and wuffing underneath it while they sprawl further and further into each other. How they match up like this, Tony will never know. They both need this – it’s not Steve just being kind. He needs this off-time, this perceived indulgence of over-hard eggs and fruit and couch-potatoing. Tony breathes in and lets the past week’s tension ease out. Steve notices, holds him, talks low about strong atomic forces so Tony will bite at his cheek and talk back, correct him with a gentle nudge.

Four movies later, Steve pulls a gift out from the treasury room.

“I didn’t –“ Tony starts, not panicked, but a tiny worry trickling a water droplet down his back.

“You didn’t,” Steve says, happy about it.

“Steve.”

“To _ny_. You give me a gift every week. It’s not often I get to give you one instead.”

Tony purses his lips.

“Give me this one,” thumb pushing on Tony’s bottom lip, Steve pouts back.

“Fine,” Tony says, like it was a battle at all. Like he’s not hiding well fed butterflies in his stomach and feeling so, so grateful to some force out there that Steve is Steve and is his.

The wrapping paper pulls away from a careful decorative case and Tony knows this –

The telescope is gold, red accents.

It’s high end. Something Tony might like to admire in a museum or as segment of a youtube documentary. An expense Tony could always afford but could never justify as a gift for himself. There was a time when Tony spent hours devouring the sky, feeling his breath catch in his throat as stars winked back at him. But, Tony hasn’t bought himself astrological equipment since he was 14. Since Howard. He’s never told that to Steve.

“You didn’t have to,” Steve shrugs, as he folds down the last of the wrapping paper, as if it is usable for anything after this.

There’s still a box in their hallway closet for it, though.

“No,” Tony says, one hand still stroking the metal, “I suppose I didn’t.”

A small smile flits across Steve’s face.

“Yeah?”

The metal is silk smooth under Tony’s wandering fingers. Metaphors about looking to the future, the gift of giving, bestowing discovery, loving the way someone loves – circle slowly in his mind. There’s intent here, like in everything with them.

“You’re gonna,” he says, finally, “have to listen to me prattle on about Polaris next week for  _so_  long.”

“Can’t wait,” Steve says, and it rings honest.

Whatever Tony did to deserve this, he would have done it a billion times over, would have done a billion things more.

Tony shuffles the telescope to the side and Steve opens his arms, already ready. Knees against Steve’s hips, thighs on his, arms looped around his neck, forehead to forehead, Tony exhales out. Hands finding their spot at Tony’s lower back, Steve kisses the line of Tony’s eyebrow.

“Happy New Year, tiny star,” he whispers.

“Thank you,” Tony whispers back.

It sounds like a confession.

They lose the countdown in between their kisses.

 

\---

 

Serendipity.

A happy chance. A positive inexplicability. A sublime alignment of infinitesimal factors allowing for fortunate and advantageous circumstance and situation.

Fate.

Tony doesn’t believe in it.

He believes in good hands.

He believes in safety nets. He believes that fairytales are what children make adults tell them – because children know the truth, that magic comes from your own voice and the myth you read is the story you conceive. He believes that Steve begged his landlord to let him out of an apartment contract early and he paid for it with savings and that Tony turns down the board asking him to come back every quarter and that they both argue and mule their way through concerned friends and timers with tickers for their chances and that fate  _can get in line._

What he believes in, simply, is them.

 

**Author's Note:**

> credits!  
> \- the naming of tony stark as tiny star obvs inspired by this lovely, iconic [tumblr post](https://starvels.tumblr.com/post/172117723376/krusca-americachavez-robbiebaldwin) <333  
> \- the first poem is [commonplace](https://tinyapps.org/docs/poems/a_commonplace_life.txt) by susan coolidge  
> \- the second poem is love by (debatably) roy croft
> 
>  
> 
> tumblr post for this fic is [[here]](https://starvels.tumblr.com/post/172120334656/we-were-meant-for-this-starvels-5k-t) and the tag for my cap-im bingo is [[here]](https://starvels.tumblr.com/tagged/stony%20bingo).
> 
> thanks for reading! comments and critiques always loved <3


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